Changelog Generator

This skill transforms technical git commits into polished, user-friendly changelogs that your customers and users will actually understand and appreciate.

When to Use This Skill

• Preparing release notes for a new version
• Creating weekly or monthly product update summaries
• Documenting changes for customers
• Writing changelog entries for app store submissions
• Generating update notifications
• Creating internal release documentation
• Maintaining a public changelog/product updates page

What This Skill Does

1. Scans Git History: Analyzes commits from a specific time period or between versions
2. Categorizes Changes: Groups commits into logical categories (features, improvements, bug fixes, breaking changes, security)
3. Translates Technical to User-Friendly: Converts developer commits into customer language
4. Formats Professionally: Creates clean, structured changelog entries
5. Filters Noise: Excludes internal commits (refactoring, tests, etc.)
6. Follows Best Practices: Applies changelog guidelines and your brand voice

How to Use

Basic Usage

From your project repository:

Create a changelog from commits since last release

Generate changelog for all commits from the past week

Create release notes for version 2.5.0

With Specific Date Range

Create a changelog for all commits between March 1 and March 15

With Custom Guidelines

Create a changelog for commits since v2.4.0, using my changelog
guidelines from CHANGELOG_STYLE.md

Instructions

When a user requests a changelog:

Step 1: Gather Commit History

# Get commits since last tag
git log $(git describe --tags --abbrev=0)..HEAD --oneline

# Get commits from specific date range
git log --since="2024-01-01" --until="2024-01-31" --oneline

# Get commits between two tags
git log v2.4.0..v2.5.0 --oneline

Step 2: Categorize Commits

Group commits into these categories:

Step 3: Filter Out Internal Changes

Exclude these commit types from user-facing changelogs:

• refactor:, refactoring
• test:, tests:
• chore:
• ci:, build:
• style: (formatting only)
• wip:, WIP

Step 4: Transform to User-Friendly Language

Before (Technical):

feat(auth): implement JWT refresh token rotation with sliding window
fix(api): resolve race condition in concurrent request handler
perf(db): add composite index on users table for search queries

After (User-Friendly):

✨ New Features
- Stay logged in longer! Your session now automatically refreshes

🐛 Fixes
- Fixed an issue where simultaneous actions could cause errors

🔧 Improvements
- User search is now significantly faster

Step 5: Format the Changelog

# Updates - [Version/Date]

## ✨ New Features

- **[Feature Name]**: [One sentence description of what users can now do]

## 🔧 Improvements

- **[Area]**: [How the user experience is better]

## 🐛 Fixes

- Fixed [user-facing issue description]

## ⚠️ Breaking Changes (if any)

- [What changed and what users need to do]

Example

Input: "Create a changelog for commits from the past 7 days"

Output:

# Updates - Week of March 10, 2024

## ✨ New Features

- **Team Workspaces**: Create separate workspaces for different
  projects. Invite team members and keep everything organized.

- **Keyboard Shortcuts**: Press ? to see all available shortcuts.
  Navigate faster without touching your mouse.

## 🔧 Improvements

- **Faster Sync**: Files now sync 2x faster across devices
- **Better Search**: Search now includes file contents, not just titles

## 🐛 Fixes

- Fixed issue where large images wouldn't upload
- Resolved timezone confusion in scheduled posts
- Corrected notification badge count

Tips

• Run from your git repository root
• Specify date ranges for focused changelogs
• Use a CHANGELOG_STYLE.md for consistent formatting
• Review and adjust the generated changelog before publishing
• Save output directly to CHANGELOG.md

Related Use Cases

• Creating GitHub release notes
• Writing app store update descriptions
• Generating email updates for users
• Creating social media announcement posts

WITH MCP Tools

If you have MCP tools available, the process is faster:

"Generate changelog from last week's commits using review_file for analysis"

WITHOUT MCP Tools

Use standard git commands:

# View recent commits
git log --oneline -50

# View commits since tag
git log v1.0.0..HEAD --pretty=format:"%s"

# View commits by author
git log --author="name" --since="1 week ago"